What Made You Decide To Finally Leave The Organization?

I concur with many here
like OnTheWayOut, Sunworshipper805,
and Magnum. For me it was cumulative and produced nagging doubts it was like, “What
in blazes am I hearing from this WT study, public talk, assembly program etc.”

The retooling of the “generation” teaching in 1995, 81
years after 1914 was a red flag. This was a benchmark teaching that many
Witnesses used to make crucial life-altering decisions. It was simply torpedoed
out of existence and replaced. My lingering doubts were now crystalized that the
leaders of this religion were clearly fabricating their doctrines. As the years
and decades marched on with no end in sight, they were using a piecemeal
approach to make modifications.

Regrettably, I remained
active until the nonsensical teaching in 2010 that two groups of anointed from
1914, overlap to make up a continuous generation. I knew it was all a falsehood
15 years earlier, what was I thinking? Aside from the obvious fear of losing your entire family
and social network in a heartbeat, something else is at play in the JW mindset.

It’s what is called herd mentality. This is defined as, “The
inability or refusal to listen to one's own instinct or 'gut feeling' but to
instead follow the majority for fear of being wrong, ostracized or ridiculed.”

While we
are nurturing doubts, we feel guilty when we observe our fellow congregants and
their apparent faithful lifestyle. We are surrounded by pioneers, elders,
servants, CO’s and Bethelites etc. We go to large conventions and see literally
thousands of people, many that we respect and admire that tirelessly soldier on
in their JW activities. We wonder could all these families be duped and I’m right.
On the other hand, could I be the one that is seeing things incorrectly?

Therefore,
the direct anxiety of being shunned along with the “herd mentality” literally
causes many years or even decades to go by, before we can break free from the
grip this religion has on people.

The GB leadership whether today
or 80 years ago has a lot to answer for; they have indeed ruined a countless
number of lives of people who were mostly sincere and believed they were doing
God’s will.

I concur with many here
like OnTheWayOut, Sunworshipper805,
and Magnum. For me it was cumulative and produced nagging doubts it was like, “What in blazes
am I hearing from this WT study, public talk, assembly program etc.”

The retooling of the “generation” teaching in 1995, 81
years after 1914 was a red flag. This was a benchmark teaching that many Witnesses used to make crucial life-altering
decisions. It was simply torpedoed out of existence and replaced. My lingering
doubts were now crystalized that the leaders of this religion were clearly
fabricating their doctrines. As the years and decades marched on with no end in
sight, they were using a piecemeal approach to make modifications.

Regrettably, I remained
active until the nonsensical teaching in 2010 that two groups of anointed from
1914, overlap to make up a continuous generation. I knew it was all a falsehood
15 years earlier, what was I thinking? Aside from the obvious fear of losing your entire family
and social network in a heartbeat, something else is at play in the JW mindset.

It’s what is called herd
mentality. This is defined as, “The inability or refusal to
listen to one's own instinct or 'gut feeling' but to instead follow the
majority for fear of being wrong, ostracized or ridiculed.”

While we
are nurturing doubts, we feel guilty when we observe our fellow congregants and
their apparent faithful lifestyle. We are surrounded by pioneers, elders,
servants, CO’s and Bethelites etc. We go to large conventions and see literally
thousands of people, many that we respect and admire that tirelessly soldier on
in their JW activities. We wonder could all these families be duped and I’m right.
On the other hand, could I be the one that is seeing things incorrectly?

Therefore,
the direct anxiety of being shunned along with the “herd mentality” literally
causes many years or even decades to go by, before we can break free from the
grip this religion has on people.

The GB leadership whether today
or 80 years ago has a lot to answer for; they have indeed ruined a countless
number of lives of people who were mostly sincere and believed they were doing
God’s will.

Injustices committed against not only myself but other JW's inside the organization. And once I escaped the WT organization- seeing the injustices brought against child abuse victims and their families confirmed I made the right decision to leave several years later. There were several other things that helped me decide to leave- but the catalyst was injustices committed by elders in the cult

Whenever I was out in FS, I used to feel that it was very childish and to go and tell this silly message about God and Armageddon. Very often things seemed too good to be true in the Org, like the 144k, only Jws being saved....Jesus picking WT in 1919 ....

I had doubts about Noah's Flood and many events in the Bible, even before I started to think critically.

A JW friend of mine tipped about the 607 BC manipulation and then the flood gates of internet opened upon me.

The most disturbing things for me were the Organ Transplant bans, Blood fractions, UNO ties and 1975 failure blame on the R&F.

Then I bought Raymond Franz "Crisis of Conscience" and read it cover to cover.

All my above research paid off. I was able to submit my disassociation letter with firmness and conviction.

Simultaneously researched about the Bible and found it to be a Fraud also.

For me it
was many things. I am a very analytical person. That is not a good trait to
have in the org. Certain things never made sense to me, but I always found a
way to repress or ignore those thoughts. But the one
thing that made me say "huh?" was the overlapping generations. I have
been mentally out ever since.

There was
collateral damage, however. My marriage is shot. I have no friends. My wife and
I don't even speak. It is almost like my family has moved on without me.

I think the WT knows exactly what it is doing, exactly what people figure out they will lose (friends, husbands, wives, children, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, cousins) and what damage it will cause, and the WT should be held liable.

That is why many cannot leave.

As a wife, I think 'what if I told my husband that I didn't think the WT was chosen in 1919'? (not even for any other reason than 'the WT gives such a stupid reason'.. let alone the 607 thing) We would always argue/discuss doctrine... I can still remember driving down a dirt road 'while vacation pioneering' explaining to him why I thought 'Jesus was our mediator'.... using scriptures, and it was ok, we always have 'debated'.

But, when it came down to the bottom line, he was my head, and he read it from the WT, and that was that.

If I had been the 'head of the house' or if my HUSBAND decided "yep, that's wrong" it may have changed earlier for us.

As it was, we both left on the overlapping anointed/ 607 thing in 2011.

For me it was primarily getting mentally and emotionally healthy and realizing that there was no real love in the organization. The way they talked about everyone outside of the organization, and they way people inside dealt with each other, betrayed a lack of love. They "use" people in the congregation, they call each other "friends" while being in cliques, they look down on so many people and their egos are wrapped up in being self-righteous. It was just ugliness. That started it all for me. It took years to get healthy, and then it honestly wasn't until after we disassociated that I even broke down enough of the doctrine to realize that they were wrong about so many things. I knew enough to get me out, but even after we left I still had a lot to learn about the cult.

For me the thing that first raised my doubts was the teaching on the creative days and the earth being only 50k or so years old.

Once I was a late teen I became quite interested in astronomy/cosmology after the broadcast of the original COSMOS series by Carl Sagan.

The org teaching was blatantly wrong and that lead me to question everything. I stayed in for 7 years after I made up my mind it was all nonsense because of my family. It was wasted time I should have left once I knew.